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Entropy

My debate continues of course, and now somebody has brought up entropy:

OLD) Posted By: Brink on Thu Apr 19 19:19:26 CEST 2007phooney i posted tons early on only to stop when u didnt disprove but dodged...here is the evidence now disprove....

the world is constantly moving closer and closer to total entropy...how than if something is constantly moving towards a chaotic state can it be originally organized if organization is the antithesis of nature's natural state as it requires much more energy to sustain than chaos?

Second, if energy can neither be created nor destroyed...how does it exist.... both of these are laws LIKE GRAVITY...so either you go get a chem/physic major and meet up with issac...or you wow me with some damn good math.

My response:

(OLD) Posted By: Ratiodecendi on Thu Apr 19 19:22:34 CEST 2007Go on and link that to God somehow and I'll have something to start disproving.

His Response:

(NEW) Posted By: Brink on Thu Apr 19 19:25:34 CEST 2007...phooney if you cant see why that links to god than i think we have an issue already

nature seeks to most efficient way to exist....hence entropy...why would it evolve to less efficient means....especially if as everything breaks down and everything moves to chaos...you would have to force something into that position...

Now.... can anybody actually see how he has linked this to God? I can't. Also his broken english is making it difficult to see what he means. However, I have clarified that by "world" he does mean the entire universe. Anybody have any thoughts on this?

Entropy is the mearurement of disorder of the universe. I think what he was getting at is it requires energy to get things ordered. If I wanted to make an ice cube, I would put water in the freezer. The freezer uses energy to pump out heat. So if I want to get the water in a more ordered state (a solid), I would have to do work (pump away heat).

This is a very tiresome old argument that has been refuted a million times in a million places. Theists think that because the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics requires that the entropy of a closed system will increase, life cannot have quickened spontaneously because that would be an increase in the amount of order in a system.

The answer, of course, is that the 2nd Law doesn't apply because life does not exist in a closed system. The conditions where life began were influenced by a variety of outside factors including solar radiation, meteorite impacts, atmospheric electricity, the magnetic field of the earth etc etc.

Even if we grant that life cannot have generated without outside help, we have only succeeded in begging the question of where that help came from and what process of ordering created it.

Don't neglect to thank the theist for accepting that the laws of science define what is and is not possible and ask them to address the multiple conflicts between their God-claims and natural science as we know it.

Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

So if entropy is true, and the universe continues to get more and more chaotic as we move through time, does this necessarily mean that the universe was once much more ordered than it is? Does this mean that at seconds after the Big Bang the universe was more ordered? Does it mean that nonexistence is more ordered than existence (in that the universe started becoming more chaotic as soon as it existed)? (I don't know the answer to any of these questions, I'm just wondering if anyone knows more than I do about the subject.)

The 2nd law doesn't humor the word "chaos" when describing the entropy of matter. That's an augmentation usually seen in the theist version of the 2nd law (along with neglecting to mention that the 2nd law referrs to matter in a closed system as already mentioned).

Let's start with the proper definition of the 2nd: the entropy of matter in a closed system has a tendency (the rate of increase is governed by probability) to increase and will never decrease. So all matter in a closed system will eventually reach maximum entropy aka equilibrium.

Now entropy: a measurement of unusable energy from degrading matter. In other words, as the Sun continues to shine, it loses it's energy and it's entropy increases. When we speak of entropy decrease, we're referring to matter that will gain and utilize energy via entropy (increase) of other matter. E.g. The Sun moves towards maximum entropy and as a result, green plants on Earth go through entropy decrease (at least momentarily).

So the fact that the 2nd law is defined in a closed system doesn't mean that matter in a shared or open system isn't subject to entropy. Quite the opposite. If we look at life on Earth, it couldn't possibly exist without the entropy of matter. Entropy is the reason for life on Earth. We like it a lot! The theist reasoning that the 2nd law trumps evolution has been soundly dismissed because the theist understanding of the 2nd law is incorrect. If it were correct we wouldn't be here. Remember, the system must be closed in order for maximum entropy to be assured. We know of no life forms that are comprised in part by- or that in totality are- closed systems. Life requires sustenance from entropy. This is how it thrives and evolves. The 2nd law strongly supports evolution. It doesn't refute it.

The other claim theist make of the 2nd law is that it shows the universe could not have been created without the aid of a mystical power because the simple fact that it's moving towards maximum entropy shows that it must have had a beginning. The million dollar question is "So who arranged it in violation of the 2nd law?"

Fair enough, but remember, you cannot logically deduct an answer to a question simply because the question exists (that would be a true and obviously false paradox and this statement is another paradox within a paradox-fun shit).

Science only offers reasonable speculation as to what came before. But reasonable is the key word.

Some have offered gravity as father of creation. Black holes continually gaining mass (possibly violating the 2nd law or adhering to it through Hawkins Radiation), eventually consume entire universes, compress them, and BANG, it starts over again. This line of thought would make for a continually expanding and contracting universe. Because the intense gravity of black holes is understood to effect matter on a quantum level it's reasonable to believe they could violate the 2nd law.

Others have offered a question to the question: do we know our universe is a closed system? Nope. If our universe was in fact influenced by an infinite number of neighbors, the 2nd law becomes a non-issue again.

But we don't know for certain. So let's consider the few choices I've offered.

The universe came to be because:

A. God did it.

B. Gravity continually collects and disperses matter.

C. Our universe is 1 of many, all sharing entropy.

It's not looking good for A. What possible reason do we have to believe "God" created the cosmos? Where did "God" come from? If he was always there, explain. How could he be conscious of a universe that doesn't exist? We'd really need another "God" to explain "God" and on and on...The "God" argument seemingly belies itself.

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

Thanks for your responses guys, it's certainly helpful to have access to a wealth of information without having to put myself through advanced university courses 10 times.

You've explained this quite well I think, I'll re-read it again when I get home from work before I start to compose my response, as I really want to understand all the relevant points, rather than just parrotting what I'm told.

By the way, Deludedgod, I've asked the theist-biology student two questions you posted in another thread here. The questions being:

How do you explain Endogenous Retroviral Gene insertion without common descent?

How do you explain and account for mitochondrial DNA horizontal transfer migration without common descent?

He says he's looking forward to responding, so I'll let you know how it goes! Should be fun eh?

I'll look forward to it. Did you post the whole thing I wrote, or just the two questions by themselves?

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.